A tester's life

November 06, 2013

The saddest piece of news I have heard since learning that the BMW X6 sells better than the 5 Series Touring Station Wagon did in its best year ever - the X6 is ugly and goes downhill from there - is the list of vehicles chosen as finalists for the Car of the Year by something called 'Connected World Magazine.'

You'll get my point when you read the opening paragraph of the press release:

"Distraction-free driving, remote access to vehicles, gesture-controlled
infotainment systems, blind-spot detection, and remote-sensing technologies, are
just a few of the features that the editors of Connected World magazine
looked at when selecting the finalists for the annual Connected Car of the Year
awards."

Dear me; do these people know NOTHING AT ALL about cars?

Distraction is a mental issue, not a dexterity issue. That is a fact, not an opinon. Having our cars enable all this stuff makes us more vulnerable, not less.

And anyone reading this blog already knows there are no blind spots to detect.

Again, a fact, not an opinion.

The finalists include the Dodge Dart with the 'Uconnect' system (hint: get into any Chrysler product with Uconnect, and use the voice activation system to try and find 'Dundas Street'); Chevrolet Impala with MyLink (try to do anything with any MyLink-equipped GM car driving east on a sunny afternoon - the fingerprints make it totally unreadable); and several Ford products with the speclal-place-in-hell SYNC with MyFord Touch system (I spent three hours screaming at this thing in a Lincoln MKZ Hybrid on a drive down to Detroit a couple of days ago, trying to find a particular hotel. It said "No entries for that destination." OK, so Detroit is in trouble. But are there NO HOTELS in Detroit? Not according to SYNC wth MyFord Touch.)

Talk about a Hall of Shame.

Steven Jobs has a lot more to answer for than setting computing back 30 years (do you still need two hands to 'Forward-Delete' on a Mac? Come on... ) and making the dumbest Smart Phone ever (how they sold one of those things, let alone millions, remains a mystery; wish I had his Kool Aid. Then again, Celine Dion sells a lot of records - maybe you CAN fool almost all of the people almost all of the time.)

But Jobs made the touch screen a 'thing'. And while you can get used to a touch screen on a phone when sitting at a desk, it simply has no place in an automobile.

I know this makes me sound like a grumpy old man.

Yes, I am grumpy. About this, anyway.

Yes, I am old - older than I was, which of course beats the only available alternative.

But ergonomics is NOT opinion; it is science.

And these systems simply cannot be made safe to work when you're careening down a highway at 100-plus km/h.

Any control which requires you to look away from the road is a bad control, especially when that same function can be done using the shape and feel of a physical knob or lever which does not require visual confirmation.

Yes, we do have more functions in our cars these days. We probably shouldn't, but we do.

But there has to be a better way.

Voice activation is supposed to be that 'better way'. But after at least ten years of intense development, they still are pretty awful, witness my Uconnect-Dundas Street thing.

And again, the distraction involved is mental, not physical.

Collectively, we managed to beat back 'talking cars' in the '80s.

But have we lost the 'connected' battle?

Probably.

But there has recently been one glimmer of hope.

On that previously-mentioned trip to Detroit to see an at-this-point-I-am-embargoed-from-telling-you-about-it vehicle, the chief designer for this automoible division pointed to two lovely shiny round chrome knobs on the centre stack.

They are for radio volume and station tuning.

Nobel Prize Committee, come and see!

He said all future products from this brand will follow this path, in response to massive negative feedback from the media (er, that would be me among others, athough presumably not 'Connected World Magazine') and, more importantly, customers.

What's next? A slot in the dash where you can put the 'key fob' so you don't lose it when it falls down between the seat and the centre console? Geez; maybe you could even twist it to activate the ignition so you wouldn't need that extra push button...

One of the hardest things for me to learn in this game has been that the customer is always right, even when (s)he's wrong.

That (s)he seems to be recognizing - even if only in this one tiny radio knob example - that maybe (s)e HAS been wrong and is starting to come around, reaffirms my faith in humanity.

November 05, 2013

Yes, the ninth annual Kenzie Car Calendar in Support of PARACHUTE
is now available for ordering.

To cut to the chase, please visit my web site and click on 'Calendar' to place your order.

Alternatively, allow me to summarize:

Even in today's digital age, who doesn't want - doesn't need - at
least one proper calendar hanging on an office, kitchen or bedroom
wall? I've yet to see a digital calendar that lets you to scribble a note in the margins...

As a fellow car enthusiast, why would you not want that calendar
to contain cool photos of great cars?

The Kenzie Car Calendar in support of PARACHUTE is the answer.
And, you will be helping a terrific safety charity as well.

The photos in my calendar were all taken by me; I understand how
lucky I am to drive all these great automobiles!

No PHOTOSHOP either. I let my sloth pass as 'purity' - I'm too lazy to learn how to use PHOTOSHOP, so what's in the frame ends up in the picture.

This is our ninth year doing this calendar. Originally, it was in
support of SMARTRISK, an injury-prevention charity established by
paediatric heart surgeon Dr. Robert Conn, who came to see that much
of his work involved putting the hearts of dead teenagers into the
bodies of fat old men.

Mind you, the older and fatter I get...

Most of those teens died as a result of 'accidental trauma', largely
car crashes. Dr. Conn realized he could save a lot more lives -
certainly, a lot more 'person-years' - if he could find a way to help
keep the teenagers from dying in the first place.

So he established SMARTRISK, which for 20 years ran a series of
educational programs throughout the country to help achieve this
goal.

In 2012, SMARTRISK merged with three other safety and injury
prevention organizations - Safe Communities Canada, Safe Kids Canada
and ThinkFirst Canada - under the umbrella of PARACHUTE. The combined
resources of these four groups are able to get their similar messages
out to a broader audience than each one could on its own.

The Kenzie Car Calendar now donates fully half of all net proceeds to
PARACHUTE, over $30,000 to date.

Not a fortune, but every little bit helps.

No need to keep this all to yourself either - the Calendar makes a perfect holiday gift for any car enthusiasts on your shopping
list. It will also remind the recipient of your thoughtfulness every
month of the coming year.

The calendar is printed on high-quality stock, with a nice shiny laminated cover, and is mailed in its own protective plastic baggie. We even cover the postage.

I also autograph every single one. Anyone got a cure for carpal tunnel syndrome?

Again, to order, simply visit www.jimkenzie.com,
and click on the 'CALENDAR' link. You can pay via PayPal, or credit
card.

If you prefer, you may send a cheque in the amount of $14.95 per
calendar plus applicable sales taxes - e.g., 13% ($1.94) HST in
Ontario, for a total of $16.89 - to:

I know police cars have their Daytime Running Lights (DRL) disabled because they might have to sneak up on the Bad Guys during a stake-out or whatever.

But you weren't sneaking up on anybody. It was broad daylight, and you didn't have your roof lights or anything on, so obviously you were not in a hurry.

But NO lights at all?

Like I said, come on.

Flick the little switch on the dashboard.

Earlier last week, I was driving in Tennessee on a Nissan event. It always feels a bit odd to drive in the USA because few cars have DRL, and up here we get used to seeing cars coming towards us with lights on.

The former editor of Car and Driver magazine seemed to think DRL was some sort of communist plot, but I digress...

It was raining for much of the time I was there, and during those times I actually saw far more cars with full headlights on there than I typically see here.

Tennessee is one of 27 of those United States of America which has a 'wipers on, lights on' law - if rain or fog requires the wipers to be operating, this law requires you to also switch on your full headlights.

While headlights on all the time regardless of time of day or weather is still the only truly sensible way to do it, maybe 'wipers on, lights on' is a bit more sensible than Daytime Running Lights.

As I have said many times, with DRL you do see light on the road ahead of you, and your dash is lit up, so there's no obvious indication that you have no taillights - which, in the vast majority of cars, you do not with DRL.

Especially on freeways where we do so much of our driving, and at higher speeds, it might be argued that taillights are even more important than headlights.

Since our federal government won't do the right thing and make DRL also work the taillights - or at least not allow the dash to be lit up under DRL, which might give brain-dead drivers half a clue - and since most car companies won't do the right thing and stop letting their customers drive around in poor weather conditions as sitting ducks for other drivers who can't see them, maybe our provincial governments have to step up with amendments to the individual Highway Traffic Acts (those being a Provincial/Territorial responsibility) to make 'wipers on, lights on' mandatory.

No, wait - those are the same people who paint the road markings so the right lane keeps disappearing, and who keep building stoplight-controlled intersections instead of roundabouts.

Geez - does nobody give a damn about traffic safety?

Two thousand five hundred deaths a year? September 11, every single year?

Again, I apologize for being pretty much incommunicado during the past week. I was at the AJAC Test Fest, evaluating all the new cars and trucks to determine the Car and Utility Vehicle of the Year, and I just never seemed to find the time.

And yes, I recognize I used that photo before...

I must have driven about 50 cars during the week. All my colleagues were doing the same thing. And in all except one of the vehicles I got into, the side-view mirrors were adjusted incorrectly.

As regular readers know, there is no such thing as a 'blind spot' if your side-view mirrors are adjusted far enough outwards.

But only one of all of the previous drivers of these vehicles had done this right.

This 'crank your mirrors out' thing isn't just something I made up. Virtually every advanced driver training program in the world teaches this technique.

It isn't merely 'opinion' either. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) produced a paper several years ago, proving geometrically that this is the only way to do it.

Yes, it takes some getting used to.

But so does driving a car.

This is a fundamental issue. There is no room for argument here.

So, why aren't my colleagues doing it correctly?

I have no idea.

Unless the car itself doesn't allow the mirrors to be adjusted far enough out. Several Mercedes-Benz models at Test Fest suffered from this. For a company which prides itself on safety, this is inexcusable.

While I'm on my soap-box, very few of the test cars I saw driving in and out of the parking lot had their full headlights on - they were relying only on Daytime Running Lights which, in the vast majority of cases, do not illuminate the taillights.

It was cloudy, gloomy and raining for much of this week, exactly the type of weather where taillights are perhaps even more critical for being visible than headlights.

Come on, people. Full lights on, all the time.

Be safe.

Nothing else makes sense.

And finally, every single car under review at Test Fest was backed into its parking space by the event's organizers, because it is unquestionably the safest way to do it.

Unless it's a 'pull-through' spot - and there were none here - you either have to back in to the spot when you arrive, or you have to back out when you leave. It takes anyone with half a functioning brain cell only about half a second to figure that backing IN is the only way to do it.

When you drive past the spot, you can see it's clear, and you can back in safely.

More important, when you have to pull out, you have full visibility of what's coming towards you - backing out into unknown traffic is obviously more dangerous.

So the test cars were all parked correctly.

And with only one exception I spotted - a red Range Rover Sport on Wednesday; you must know who you are - every test car was backed in to its spot when the journalist returned it.

But in the parking area where the journos parked their own cars, I'd say over half of them were driven frontwards into their spots.

At the end of the day, they had to back out into traffic, which often included the golf carts which were ferrying us around the property.

Major danger.

Even with the examples right in front of them all day long, most were STILL doing it wrong.

Come on, people.

Mirrors Out.

Headlights On.

Back In.

We know many of our readers/viewers have not learned these techniques, largely because they have never been properly taught how to drive.

October 27, 2013

But last week was the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC) Car/Utility Vehicle of the Year Test Fest, where we bring all the new cars, trucks, SUVs and Crossovers to one location so journalists from across the country can evaluate them in order to choose the best new vehicles in each of several categories, and the overall Car and Utility Vehicle of the Year.

We've been doing this for three decades, and to our knowledge, there is still no other program anywhere in the world that is so comprehensive, where such a broad range of journos - over 100 this year, our most ever - can drive so many vehicles back to back, on the same roads, under the same conditions, for a proper apples-to-apples comparison.

That 'one location' was slightly different this year. For several years now, we've been at the Niagara Regional Airport near Niagara on the Lake. For reasons about which I am not 100% certain, we shifted down the road a little to The Legends of Niagara Golf Course, which provided ample space for all these vehicles, and access to a number of local roads to try them out.

The lack of a true high-performance track was a bit of an issue; a complex slalom course was set up to allow us to expose any handling deficiencies.

This photo (right)? That's the Horseshoe Falls, taken from the top floor restaurant of the Niagara Falls Hilton where we had breakfast each morning.

We had expected animals-walking-two-by-two weather all week; we did have a few showers and it was cold and windy at times.

But for late October?

We'll settle for that.

The category winners will be announced in early December, the overall winners at the Canadian International Auto Show next February.

I apologize for not blogging daily from the event, as I had planned to do. Our on-site Internet connection was a bit iffy at times, there were just too many cars to test, and we also had the third appearance of the AJAC Troubadours, a rock 'n' roll band consisting of journalists and car company personnel for which I was, among other things, lead Cat Herder.

There just didn't ever seem to be any time.

I'll fill you in with tidbits over the next few days, plus we'll have full coverage in Wheels as the week progresses.

October 17, 2013

From the 'It's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it" file, I spent most of Wednesday thrashing a fleet of Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series coupes around WiIlow Springs raceway in California.

Once I figured out how to set the ESC to 'Sport' mode, so it wouldn't turn the 600-odd horsepower into about 250 every time I got a touch of wheelspin, it was huge fun.

Willow is a very fast track, and quite bumpy in spots. We were doing 'lead-follow' with Maxi Goetz, a successful young German race car driver as our Mama Duck, and two of us following in tandem, swapping positions each lap so we could get a closer look at Maxi's line.

After six or seven sessions of five laps each, I thought I was starting to get the hang of it.

Then I went as ballast for a hot lap with Maxi behind the wheel.

Um - still have a lot to learn...

After the track sessions, Reinhold Renger, Chief Instructor for the AMG Advanced Driving School, took an E63 4MATIC sedan out onto a skid pad for a little drifting demonstration.

Reinhold and Maxi then got into a pair of SLS Black Series coupes, and did a little drifting dance. Watch that one here - that's Reinhold in the red car (and on the left in the photo below), and Maxi in the silver car (and on the right).

October 15, 2013

In their Don Quixote-like pursuit of their distorted view of traffic law enforcement, our
police departments continue to find creative new ways to catch us
driving at speeds our road networks have obviously been designed to
handle.

I
drove by a classic radar fishing hole the other day - Eglinton Avenue
westbound approaching Leslie.

Exactly
the sort of high-risk area the police are supposed to target - there
isn't a road, a store, a school, a business, a driveway, a
pedestrian, for kilometers.

Visibility is such that you can see
until next Tuesday.

But
never mind - lots of people going above the artificially low 60 km/h limit; lots of
tickets.

The
radar/laser unit was mounted on a tripod, as it often is.

But
what caught my eye was the Ford Explorer parked beside it, wherein I presume the
operators of said device were sitting.

It was painted Metro Toronto Police white, with
red and blue graphics.

But
it was labelled "Metro Toronto Police Dog Service".

What?

If
they catch a perp, they send a dog after him?

Can't you just imagine driving along, and a pooch runs up beside you,
indicating you should pull over?